Some of the comments here make it sound like these things are going off all the time, so I looked up the stats [1]. Here are some highlights from the 2018 and 2017 stats. They seem to be fairly typical years.
In 2018, there were 161 Amber Alerts. 112 of those were state-wide and 49 were regional. 155 resulted in a recovery, 28 of which were as a direct result of the Amber Alert.
There were 37 states that had alerts. The most were Texas (23), Ohio (15), and California (11).
2017 had 195 alerts, 154 state-wide, 40 regional, and 1 local. 193 resulted in a recovery, 39 as a direct result of the Amber Alert.
The top 3 states were Texas (26), California (19), and Georgia (14).
Millions of people's days were disturbed by the "Amber Alert" system. How much productivity was lost? How many people will (like me) disable Amber Alerts because they're disturbing?
How many Amber alerts are just custody battles where no one in danger. How many people suffer the consequences of being misidentified by the general public sleuths that follow these alerts. It seems that the entire system is built on unsound reasoning.
There was a California one yesterday that was a domestic dispute. Father vs Mother. The father was stopped when some people surrounded his car at a gas station. Does law enforcement really want people to be "deputized" as law enforcement officers? The whole system is crazy.
To all appearances, this looked like an actual kidnapping. For myself, I'm happy to receive an amber alert on my phone even if it sometimes ends up being a false alarm. About your point of "productivity", I can't really say, but I'm skeptical that it's worth measuring such a tiny disruption to a day even if it affects millions of people.
It's more annoying to me when they issue Amber Alerts for fairly low risk non-custodial parental abduction cases. I could easily see that making the whole system less effective if they deploy it for such cases.
Waking up someone during sleep is not a tiny disruption. Year's ago, the whole house was woken up in the middle of the night between 1AM and 3AM or something, and I remember the next day, everyone was trying to figure out how to turn off the alerts.
Until people get punished for the crime they faked with an equal punishment as if they were committing the crime, these fake crimes for attention will never cease.
The reward of temporary internet fame and whatever may come from the fallout usually is greater than the repercussions.
Maybe, maybe not. She's 16 and doesn't sound like she really thought about the consequences. I doubt previous conviction records would've deterred her from doing it.
>I doubt previous conviction records would've deterred her from doing it.
I personally do not believe that line of thinking. Personally I think that if a few kids ended up being charged as an adult for lying, wasting police resources and making a big scene word will spread quickly.
What I think is that for every kid or adult who does this and gets away with a slap on the wrist, it only will embolden others to try to do the same as the reward outweighs the consequence.
Much like big companies doing illegal activities and pay a fine, only after making 10x the fine by doing the illegal activity. They could care less and will keep repeating this until it becomes negative to their books/reputation.
The most recent case I can think of was the fake hate hoax where that black guy hired buddies who were also black to stage a fake hate crime complete with a noose etc and then blame it on Trump supporters.
The judge let him off with nothing because he was 'famous' even when he was found out to be completely lying.
Now if they took him, threw him in prison for however long the hate crime perpetrator would have gotten and blasted that headline across the news outlets I feel it would deter others from trying to repeat his actions.
Instead you see him walking free with a smug grin on his face which only makes others think that it would be okay to do the same thing.
Clearly there should be some discretion in punishing children like adults but they already have a ton of laws regarding trying kids like an adult and could use the same framework in deciding how to go about doing the same with the hate hoaxes.
How many votes were won by the politicians championing Amber Alerts?
It's all about showing you did something for liability purposes, either for elections or for the courts when you get sued.
Who cares if the smoke detectors are too sensitive and don't detect a fire 99.99999% of the time, resulting in people ignoring them when they are triggered? The real purpose is to shield the governments by saying they did something to try and prevent deaths from a fire by requiring a smoke detector. I literally slept through them in college because they were basically a daily occurrence, and I was able to out of my window if needed.
In 2018, there were 161 Amber Alerts. 112 of those were state-wide and 49 were regional. 155 resulted in a recovery, 28 of which were as a direct result of the Amber Alert.
There were 37 states that had alerts. The most were Texas (23), Ohio (15), and California (11).
2017 had 195 alerts, 154 state-wide, 40 regional, and 1 local. 193 resulted in a recovery, 39 as a direct result of the Amber Alert.
The top 3 states were Texas (26), California (19), and Georgia (14).
[1] https://amberalert.ojp.gov/statistics